NEWS ROUNDUP

Land grab gives Army bully image When the United States Army informs you it's looking to expand - believe it. Last week, the Pentagon gave Fort Carson a pass from a 16-year-old moratorium prohibiting major land acquisitions. According to a news release, Fort Carson "intends to initiate efforts to potentially acquire up to 418,577 acres for the expansion of the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site" to get the job done. That's the size of ... well, it's freaking huge - a tripling of the present size of the Fort Carson training site. New military technology and modern warfare mean the Army needs more land. But Coloradans must ask themselves: at what price? Of the many prospective problems that come to mind - both environmental and economic - the most disquieting to the average citizen should be the way government obtains land in these situations: They take it. It's a governmentwide addiction called eminent-domain abuse. Right now, for instance, half of Fort Carson's land consists of acreage that was originally seized through condemnation of property and eminent domain. It's hard to believe that the new massive expansion can be patched together in alternative ways. Especially because many locals have no intention of selling their land....
Time to Kill the RAT? The ever-growing controversy over the Bush administration’s pay-for-play policy and efforts to make our public lands “sustainable” with recreation fees has hit another milestone. At least one member of Congress wants to repeal the law that makes it all possible, the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act (FLREA) or RAT, Recreation Access Tax, as it’s called by detractors, and start over with a system that the public endorses and that Congress passed the old-fashioned way, by voting on it, otherwise known as democracy. As the federal government rolls out its new America the Beautiful Pass, Representative Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) wants to go the opposite direction and eliminate fees. He thinks the Forest Service can’t see the forest through the fees. DeFazio has tried twice earlier to spike FLREA, but has gotten nowhere in the Republican Congress. Now, with the Democrats at the helm, he thinks he can get to the finish line....
Sides dig in for mine debate In the 1980s an environmental group bought roughly 900 acres of land and mining claims at the edge of the Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument and turned it over to the U.S. Forest Service "to preserve the integrity" of a nearby river. Today, a mining company wants to explore the same land in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest for copper, gold, molybdenum and silver. The prospect of a new mine in the volcano's forested foothills has riled environmentalists, who are particularly irked because the land was purchased for its own protection. At the same time, the potential for new mining jobs is raising hopes in economically depressed nearby towns....
Basin might see 3,000 new wells near monument Some conservationists are decrying a proposed Bureau of Land Management plan that would open the Vermillion Basin near Dinosaur National Monument to oil and gas development. But the BLM’s draft Little Snake Resource Management Plan would do more than open the Vermillion Basin to drilling. The plan envisions more than 3,000 wells being drilled in the 1.3-million-acre region over the next 20 years, leaving only 160,870 acres off-limits to energy development. The agency is updating its management plan for the region that will govern how oil and gas, sage grouse habitat, wilderness study areas, off-road vehicles, wild horses and other natural features are managed. The BLM’s Little Snake Resource Area, based in Craig, includes portions of Garfield, Rio Blanco and Grand counties and most of Moffat and Routt counties. The BLM land in the plan surrounds Browns Park National Wildlife Refuge and the northern half of Dinosaur National Monument, and stretches east to Steamboat Springs. Energy development in the plan is spread throughout the entire region....
Ore. timber theft increasing in rural areas, officials say Timber theft has increased in southern Oregon as more people have moved to rural areas, officials say. Tom Lowell, 53, is one of several public and private landowners hit by timber thieves. When he set out to log a parcel of land just outside Gold Hill he found the trees had already been cut. A forest engineer estimated it cost Lowell $5,000 worth of Douglas fir and madrone trees. He said any loss of income will be felt with a baby on the way. "Most people don't know how much trees are worth," Lowell said. "And unless you catch the thieves in the act, it's a tough crime to prove." Evidence suggests the trees were cut sometime in 2005. Lowell discovered the stumps late last year. Private landowners are not the only targets of forest thieves. According to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, there were 65 reported cases of forest product and timber theft last year....
State-fed wolf talks could revive A little over a week after Wyoming leaders declared talks with the federal government over wolf management all but dead, momentum for such a deal may be building once again. The regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Monday he was encouraged that Gov. Dave Freudenthal and lawmakers are discussing changes to the state's wolf management plan. Meanwhile, a hunting group that has fought alongside the state to manage wolves on Wyoming's own terms has broken ranks with the agriculture industry by urging the state to accept the federal government's proposal to remove protection for the animals. Those developments don't eliminate the biggest remaining obstacle to a state-federal agreement that would allow wolves in Wyoming to become part of the federal government's wolf delisting process: Wyoming's insistence that it be allowed to kill wolves to protect wildlife before delisting becomes final. But Mitch King, regional director for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said he's willing to consider the issue further....
Mouse to reign in Castle Rock digs The ravine that divides downtown Castle Rock from Interstate 25 is getting a monumental makeover fit for a mouse. The $461,000 project to rehabilitate Sellers Gulch will provide a permanent home for the endangered Preble's meadow jumping mouse. The rare rodent is usually a problem for developers and public officials who grapple with the cost and limits of federal protections. But while the price tag is hefty, so are the benefits, say town officials and environmentalists. Protecting the mouse in the shadow of downtown makes a statement about how Castle Rock values the environment, said Jane Cyphers, a member of Castle Rock's Parks and Recreation Commission....
UC expansion plans again run up against protected fairy shrimp Endangered fairy shrimp, those tiny vernal pool dwellers that have bedeviled planners at UC Merced for years, are flexing their protected status again. The half-inch-long crustaceans are in the path of the campus' long-range development plans and, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, their environmental standing might force the university to expand elsewhere -- possibly 15 miles away. The campus, which opened in 2005 and is 6 miles from downtown Merced, wants to grow directly to the north and east with new dorms, lecture halls, classroom buildings and other facilities needed to accommodate a projected enrollment of 25,000 students by 2030. The expansion would involve 910 adjacent acres, including 86 acres of seasonal wetlands over which the Corps of Engineers holds authority to regulate development or reject it outright....
Logging Permit Violates Protection of Northern Spotted Owl A federal appeals court ruled Friday that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service violated the Endangered Species Act when it approved a 22,000-acre logging project that affects northern spotted owl habitat in southern Oregon. In a case dating from 2001, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling that would allow logging based on an "incidental take" statement estimating how many owls might be killed. Any landowners, companies, state or local governments with projects that might incidentally harm - or "take" - wildlife that is listed as endangered or threatened must first obtain an incidental take permit from the Fish and Wildlife Service. But the appeals court found the statement supporting the permit for about 75 proposed timber sales in the Rogue River Basin had no scientific foundation, lacked a specific estimate of how many owls would be killed by the logging, and had no "trigger" for keeping track of whether too many owls were being killed....
Scientists unite to push Bush on climate Pressure on the White House to act on scientific assessments of global warming mounted yesterday after the world’s largest general scientific society said that climate change was a “threat to society”. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) joined the growing clamour for political action in a public statement approved by its board. It is the first time that the AAAS, which represents 262 societies and scientific academies, has published a statement of consensus on climate change. It was issued on Sunday during a conference where a series of studies added weight to the body of evidence of human impact on the climate and environment. In the statement the association said: “The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now, and it is a growing threat to society....
NMSU is home to the world’s hottest chile pepper When Paul Bosland exhaled after taking a bite of the world’s hottest chile pepper, it felt like he was breathing fire. “Got milk?” he thought. Bhut Jolokia, the world’s hottest chile pepper The next thing Bosland thought, after gulping down a soda, was, “That chile has got to be some kind of record.” He was right. In fall of 2006, the Guinness Book of Records confirmed that New Mexico State University Regent’s Professor Paul Bosland had indeed discovered the world’s hottest chile pepper, Bhut Jolokia. Bhut Jolokia, at 1,001,304 Scoville Heat Units (SHU), is nearly twice as hot as Red Savina, the chile pepper variety it replaces as the world’s hottest. A New Mexico green chile contains about 1,500 SHUs and an average jalapeno measures at about 10,000 SHUs. “The name Bhut Jolokia translates as ‘ghost chile,’” Bosland said, “we’re not sure why they call it that, but I think it’s because the chile is so hot, you give up the ghost when you eat it!” Paul Bosland, NMSU professor, shows off his Guinness World Records certificate for the world’s hottest chile peppe According to Bosland, Bhut Jolokia is a naturally occurring inter-specific hybrid indigenous to the Assam region of northeastern India. A member of NMSU’s Chile Pepper Institute visiting India sent Bhut Jolokia seeds back to NMSU for testing in 2001....
Humans' beef with livestock: a warmer planet As Congress begins to tackle the causes and cures of global warming, the action focuses on gas-guzzling vehicles and coal-fired power plants, not on lowly bovines. Yet livestock are a major emitter of greenhouse gases that cause climate change. And as meat becomes a growing mainstay of human diet around the world, changing what we eat may prove as hard as changing what we drive. It's not just the well-known and frequently joked-about flatulence and manure of grass-chewing cattle that's the problem, according to a recent report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Land-use changes, especially deforestation to expand pastures and to create arable land for feed crops, is a big part. So is the use of energy to produce fertilizers, to run the slaughterhouses and meat-processing plants, and to pump water. "Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today's most serious environmental problems," Henning Steinfeld, senior author of the report, said when the FAO findings were released in November. Livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions as measured in carbon dioxide equivalent, reports the FAO. This includes 9 percent of all CO2 emissions, 37 percent of methane, and 65 percent of nitrous oxide. Altogether, that's more than the emissions caused by transportation....
Canadian Cattle Slip Past USDA Safeguards Hundreds of cattle from Canada, which this month confirmed its ninth case of mad cow disease, have entered the United States without government-required health papers or identification tags, according to documents obtained by cattlemen in Washington state. The documents, consisting largely of correspondence between state officials and American cattle and meat companies, suggest problems with numerous truckloads of cattle that are shipped into this country almost daily. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently launched an investigation into the Canadian cattle trade based on the documents, according to a top department official. Many of the documents note that cattle arrived in the U.S. without identification tags, or they had tag numbers that did not match the accompanying health certificates. Overall, the approximately 700 pages of records suggest that officials from Washington and possibly other states are having difficulty tracking hundreds of cattle that arrive from Canada each week....
Maricopa Man Guilty In Bogus Mad Cow Testing Case A Maricopa man has pleaded guilty in a case that involved bogus testing for mad cow disease. Roland Emerson Farabee, 55, had a federal government contract to collect samples from high-risk animals and submit them to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for testing. He was also supposed to keep the carcasses in a freezer until the tests were done. But Farabee delivered tests from healthy animals and didn't keep the carcasses. He and his company, Farm Fresh Meats, Inc., pleaded guilty this week to theft of government funds, wire fraud and mail fraud. The scam cost the government $390,000....
It's an original Graham The Graham truck - an Evansville original and a classic - has come home. Thomas B. Lockyear, a Vanderburgh County-based energy consultant and lifelong dabbler in antique automobiles, brought an original one-ton 1924 Graham Brothers Truck Co. pickup to his home Monday. Lockyear bought the vintage truck from a Colorado collector in January. Rusty but solid, its wooden box carrier deteriorated and its original motor intact, the rare vehicle is a tangible reminder of the truck company formed in Evansville in 1919 by Joe, Bob and Ray Graham. The company eventually surpassed Dodge in truck production and became the second-largest producer in the country, second to only General Motors. Lockyear plans to restore the truck to its former glory and ensure it remains in Evansville....
Cowboy spirit comes to life in Ellensburg There is perhaps no other American icon more commercialized than the cowboy, who over the years has been used to sell everything from jeans to cigarettes to consumers worldwide. But strip away the Levi's and the Marlboros and what you're left with are the men and women who helped to settle this country, one open range at a time. Theirs was a hard way of life — one that was remembered and celebrated during the third annual Spirit of the West Cowboy Gathering in Ellensburg over the weekend. "For us, it's keeping a lot of the traditions alive of the original cowboys that settled the West," said Diana Tasker, president of the Spirit of the West board of directors. "To remember our history ... the blood, sweat and tears that ranchers put into settling this area."....
Freedom? Fat Chance! Harper’s magazine reports that Americans burn an extra 938 million gallons of gasoline each year because we’re too fat. That estimate of how much the nation’s chubses are wasting in gas comes from a study by Sheldon Jacobson, professor of computer science at the University of Illinois and director of the school’s simulation and optimization laboratory. “The key finding,” reports Jacobson, “is that nearly 1 billion gallons of fuel are consumed each year because of the average weight gain of people living in the United States since 1960 — nearly three times the total amount of fuel consumed by all passenger vehicles each day based on current driving habits.” On average, we’re up in weight per capita in the U.S. since 1960 by 24 pounds, the size of a nice Thanksgiving turkey. Officially, the federal government says that 62 percent of us are “overweight,” and probably 99 percent of us would say the government’s too fat, so we’re more than even. It’s fat city, all over....
It’s The Pitts: May He Rest In Pieces Laugh if you will, but being a writer is very dangerous work. In the telling of tales the author must often weigh the reader’s satisfaction against the possibility that the author may be putting someone’s life in danger. As in this case. In many parts of the wild West there is a growing scourge upon the land in the form of wild hogs who denude the landscape and plow up the ground as if they were D-9 Cats. In an effort to rid the landscape of these pests many ranchers have leased out hunting rights to guides who offer pig hunts to sportsmen faced with fewer places to hunt. These wild pig hunts have become popular amongst hunters who lack the money to go on safari or the necessary skill to shoot pheasants and quail. One of my friends is a guide so good he can track bees in a blizzard or follow a mountain goat over solid rock. That’s why he has a long list of clients who sign up for his pig hunts. On one such hunt he was guiding two urban hunters who wanted a trophy hog. Consequently, though they saw numerous wild hogs, they’d taken no shots. It was getting late in the day on their last day when the guide motioned for his clients to hit the ground and be very quiet. As they crept through the underbrush, guns poised at the ready, they saw in a clearing a most magnificent beast. Standing not twenty yards away, his shiny black coat reflecting the late afternoon sun, was a huge boar, with tusks as long as an elephant’s. Missing his tail, and part of an ear, the boar was so big he could shade a horse! Surely here was a hog worthy of a taxidermist’s talent....